News
The Lord is my Shepherd chosen for Private Passions
December 2011
On Sunday 4 December on BBC Radio 3, Michael Berkeley's Private Passions guest was English porcelain expert Henry Sandon, from the BBC's Antiques Roadshow. Amongst Sandon's choices of music was Lennox Berkeley's The Lord is my Shepherd (op. 91/1). You can learn more about the programme here.
Royal Academy Berkeley day explores composition
20 November 2011
The third Berkeley Day focused on two facets of Lennox Berkeley's life; his time as a student and his work as a teacher when he was professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music. At the centre of the afternoon was distinguished guest and former Berkeley pupil, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett. The events, in association with the Lennox Berkeley Society and with the generous support of Mr Noriyuki Ida, explored and reflected the influence of Berkeley's own teachers, as well as the influence he had on the generation of composers he taught, including Richard Rodney Bennett, John Tavener, Nicholas Maw and Brian Ferneyhough, as well as his own son, Michael Berkeley.
- 2.30pm. Master and Pupil round-table discussion. More details...
- 4.00pm. Concert by Academy students. More details...
Carmen Callil, Michael Berkeley and Tony Scotland on Lennox & Freda at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival
October 2011
The controversial writer and publisher Carmen Callil — founder of the feminist press Virago — chaired a panel discussion about Tony Scotland's book Lennox & Freda, with Michael Berkeley and the author at the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 16 2011.
The book is more than a portrait of an unconventional marriage between the composer Lennox Berkeley and his secretary at the BBC, Freda Bernstein — and the music it inspired. It's also about Lennox's earlier relationships with Benjamin Britten and a young airman, Freda's with a married art historian, the Oxford of the Brideshead generation, Cocteau's Paris, and the BBC in wartime; it's a record of a vanished way of life — and of the eternal peculiarities of the human heart.
If you have already read Lennox & Freda this discussion may have answered some of the questions it raises; if you haven't, you may want to. Michael Berkeley reflected on it as a son and fellow composer, Carmen Callil as a friend of Michael and a famously outspoken critic, and Tony Scotland revealed how and why he wrote the book.
Nelly Miricioiu joins Petroc Trelawny on In Tune
August 2011
The Romanian-born diva Nelly Miricioiu was a guest of Petroc Trelawny on In Tune on BBC Radio Three on Thursday 25th August. As well as talking about her life and career as one of the world's leading exponents of bel canto, and her forthcoming recital at the North Norfolk Music Festival (in the Marble Hall, Holkham, on 2 September, Norfolk), she sung live in the studio songs by Simon Rowland-Jones, Tiberiu Brediceanu - and Lennox Berkeley (whom she first met in 1982, when she gave a private recital for the family at 8 Warwick Avenue).
Berkeley-scored Hotel Reserve screened by BBC
July 2011
Singer and voice coach Sarah Dennis wrote in to inform us that Hotel Reserve, a film scored by Lennox Berkeley, was being screened by the BBC in July. She wrote, "It is a great old James Mason film and Lennox Berkeley wrote the score. Fascinating as the music must have been quite ground-breaking at the time."